Chapter 369

The Prison Planet

Morales had used the last of his ready brain/piss solution on the saber-tooth hide before going to bed last night. With an ache in his bladder, he awoke just before dawn. After scooping some of the cat's brains into the piss bucket, he pulled out his dick and did his thing. "Damn. Still need more piss to make up enough of the solution to work into the rest of the hide," he griped. Glancing over at Lobo who sat watching, he jokingly said, "You piss like a fucking race horse. Why don't you piss in the bucket so I can make enough of the solution to work into the rest of the hide before it dries out?"

He continued to amusingly think about the wolf pissing in the bucket, but his growling stomach made itself known and his thoughts eventually changed. He wondered what he would have for breakfast – not that he had a wide selection. With a cook fire laid, he reached for a smoldering piece of wood from the almost burned out entrance fire. As he turned to start his kindling going, he chanced to look toward the piss/brain bucket. Lobo stood, leg hiked, pissing into the bucket. The sting of a singed finger snapped Morales' attention back and he quickly shoved the smoldering wood into the kindling.

When Lobo finished, he turned to look at his master for a second before returning to his favorite place to lie and grin at Morales.

"Son. Of. A. Bitch," Morales whispered as he stared at the wolf. How did he understand what I wanted? Surely it was a fluke. I know I talk to myself all the time, but I haven't made any effort to teach him to piss in the bucket. Hell, I did call it the piss/brain bucket when I was trying to teach him the name of some of the things in here, but how in the hell ... Ah shit. Maybe he just saw me piss there and decided to do the same thing. I guess he had to go really bad. Surely he can't understand ... But dammit, what if he can?

Absently, he washed his hands, rinsed his percolator, then added coffee and water before placing it on the cook fire.

After frying a pile of thin-sliced potatoes mixed with chunks of deer jerky, he fried up about a pound of bacon. Divvying the food, he put Lobo's out, then sat to eat, his mind worrying at the memories of what he and the wolf had done together.

We fight as a team. His actions have always seemed to be just the thing I needed at that exact moment. We fought the panther as a team and ... the first saber-tooth. He drove the deer straight to me, and he herded the hogs toward me even though I fell and wasn't ready when I should have been. I remember the look he gave me before he sent the last two hogs in my direction. It was as if he were saying, "I'm doing my part. Why aren't you killing one of them instead of sitting on that limb whining?" He caught the fish and let me have it – same with the gar. He was smart enough to realize what I needed to get the case up the hill – and pushed it. He actually pushed, and pushed hard. How many dogs could you even teach to do that? I've always wondered why a wild animal would let me patch up its side. It's as if he fucking knew I was trying to help him. A wild animal doesn't act that way.

Lobo, as always, began to gobble up his food, but half-finished, he stopped to lock eyes with his master. After several seconds, the wolf made his chuffing sound, flashed his terrifying grin and resumed his eating.

It can't be. It just fucking can't be, Morales thought as he came to his feet. Mentally shaking himself, I've got shit to do. I'll worry about this later. He wiped his plate and fork, rinsed them, then did the same for the frying pan before moving the percolator away from the fire. After downing the dregs of his coffee, he rinsed the cup and put it on its special, nearby shelf ready for instant use. Turning to the wolf, "Ready to do a little exploring, Boy?"

As he donned his weapons and backpack, he talked to the wolf. "I've been reading about some of the things those scientists wrote about the planet. Once they realized that this world was going to be used as a prison, they began preparing it a bit. One of the things that caught my eye was a section where they commented about seeding many places with a hardy species that should reproduce correctly practically forever – vegetables, fruit trees and the like. Supposedly, there would be one or more of these places reasonably near where each prisoner would be dropped. They knew the native plants would strive to regain the area, but they were confident that the Earth plants would maintain a foothold, even without help. If I understand the coordinates correctly, one of those seeded areas is northeast of here – across the stream and almost parallel to it as it swings slightly to the right, according to the map," he finished, pointing.

Lobo cocked his head to the side and whined.

"Yeah, yeah, I know. Shot in the dark, but dammit. I'm getting tired of jerky and potatoes. Both are darned good, but a little variety would sure help, huh, Boy?"

As always, Lobo was ready to go, dancing around as Morales filled a pocket with jerky. As soon as the human started for the barrier, the wolf ran over, grabbed the lower bar and pulled it free. By the time Morales, pulling the case, had neared, Lobo had two of the poles down.

Chuckling, Morales removed two more bars, ducked under and pulled the case on down the narrow channel to the outside. By the time he returned to the barrier, Lobo had the lowest pole in his mouth and was struggling to line it up with its matching hole in the cave wall. The human waited as the wolf eventually managed to center the pole and push it home.

"Good Boy," he said, leaning over to hug the big wolf. "The thing that pisses me off is that I can't tell anybody how smart you are". Then sobering, "Neither of us would be here without the other. You know that, don't you, Boy?"

Lobo chuffed at him.

Barrier poles up, he slapped the wolf good-naturedly on the shoulder. At the spring just above the cave, Morales refilled his canteen with fresh, cold water. After a long drink, he topped the canteen off again and returned it to his belt. Lobo lapped from the water as it came down the small ditch below the spring. As Morales watched, he realized that he would not have scolded the wolf if he had drunk from the spring. Guess my priorities have changed, he thought.

A few minutes later, they crossed the stream with Lobo dancing along the stepping-stones as Morales floated the case across while struggling to keep his feet dry.

A hundred yards or so past the stream, Morales chose a route parallel to it. After the first quarter mile or so, the trees and vegetation thinned out enough that he could make reasonably good time with only an occasional detour because of vegetation too thick to pull the case through.

Farther along, he bore a little more to the right, leaving the sound of the flowing water. "Keep an eye out, Boy. We're looking for something that we can eat without killing it with a bow. Chances are those hogs might give us a clue, if we see any of them. From what I've read about them, those fuckers will eat anything. And ... if things work out that way, I'm not above curing some more hog meat. Vegetables or pork. Win, win as far as I'm concerned."

A little later, he stood on a small hill overlooking a valley a mile or so long, reasonably flat with a small stream running along two sides of it. It was overgrown with weeds, as was most every open space he had seen in the area, but there was a difference here. Scattered about were different types of trees. Even though he had been raised in a big city, he had seen enough on TV to realize that some of them had to be fruit trees. He was even more certain when Lobo flushed a group of hogs that went dashing off in every direction squealing and snorting.

The first tree he came to had a couple pieces of shriveled up fruit still hanging from its higher branches, and the area under the tree was trampled down, presumably from animals searching for fruit on the ground. "I think this is a peach tree, Lobo. If it is, we're going to have something really good to eat next year. But the peaches look to have been small. I wonder if we aren't too far north for them to grow well. The article I read said that peach trees bore fruit in the spring to early summer. Another reason to suspect that we're in late summer."

There were animal paths almost everywhere in the tall weeds. "Shit, Lobo. I think that article was for real. This must be one of the areas the scientists seeded, but the fucking weeds have practically taken over. How will I find vegetables in this mess?"

There was a dozen or so of the peach trees grouped together, but they weren't going to do him any good this year.

He climbed a few feet up to the main fork of one of the peach trees in an effort to see farther, but between the leaves of the tree and the lack of height, he was unable to make out much about the other groups of trees in the distance.

"Oh, well. Nothing to do but go look. Search, Boy. I'd hate to walk up on a panther in these weeds."

A hundred yards later, he came upon another group of trees, but these were even easier to identify because they were hanging heavy with apples. The lower limbs were stripped, of course, but there were still many apples left on the trees. He knew little about apples other than choosing some that looked good and fit his budget at the grocery store. Generally, the store apples were bigger than these, but as he reached up to pull one off and taste it, a grin crossed his face. After being without anything that tasted sweet for the several weeks he had been here, the sweetness of the apple seemed to almost explode in his mouth.

"Oh, shit, that's good," he said while munching away. "Come here, Lobo. Let's see if you like apples."

Morales cut a wedge out of the apple and handed it to the wolf. Lobo sniffed it and tentatively took it into his mouth, chewed once and swallowed. Tail suddenly wagging, he whined and looked at Morales.

"Good, huh?"

Lobo chuffed back at him, and Morales cut another big wedge for the wolf, who promptly made it disappear.

"I used to buy dried apple slices at the store. They were high as hell but they sure tasted good while watching TV. I don't know shit about drying them, but I'm going to learn. Watch for me, Boy, while I put some of these in the case. We're going to take a load of apples back to the cave."

Taking his shirt off, he used it for a makeshift sack to gather the apples in. Grabbing hold of a limb, he pulled it down enough to strip it of its fruit, then worked his way around the tree. When he couldn't reach any more apples, he tried shaking the tree. It was too sturdy to be shaken much, so he climbed head high and shook the limbs he could reach.

The weeds and grass under this tree, like the peach trees, were trampled down from animals partaking of the bounty. Between the grass and the soft, sandy loam of the valley, he hoped to not bruise the apples too much as he shook them from the highest limbs.

When he had the case half full of the small, but intensely sweet apples, he stopped. There are a lot more here, but I don't want to pick more than I can take care of before they rot. Guess I'll leave the rest on the trees for later. Wondering what he would do next, he moved on into the valley. The article said that the scientists planted a number of different vegetables that would reseed themselves, but how in the hell am I supposed to find anything in all these weeds? The only thing he could think of to do was to just systematically search until he stumbled onto something.

It didn't take long to find that something, but he wasn't quite sure at first what he had found. Massive amounts of vines wrapped around weeds and ... corn stalks, he decided, dominating a sizeable area. He parted the weeds to have a better look, then pulled the husk back on several of the hanging ears, but the kernels were fully mature, hard and dry. Oh, well, I didn't really expect anything because all the leaves on the stalks are brown. But ... next year, I should have corn that I can boil or fry.