Chapter 7

I built the breakfast fire next and the girls cooked while I drank coffee and thought about what we'd be doing. I'll admit I wasn't in much of a mood about now. Moving all our crap was going to be a real pain in the ass. We probably had room for most of it on the four sleds but we only had enough people to drag three at a time. I couldn't see pulling them a few hundred feet and then going back for the other one. That would be too much trouble and things would be more dangerous that way too.

Breakfast put me in a better mood. They fixed nearly twice as much as we usually ate and then made sure I stuffed in all they couldn't hold. Chris said it was an extra big meal since they weren't sure we'd have time to stop for lunch. I didn't comment, but I was pretty sure I could make time.

The two of them hadn't been working on sorting things out for more than an hour when Mary came up with a much better solution to our problems.

"Jack, can't we just hook two of the sleds together, side by side, and haul it all? We can shift the weight around as we go, and make sure no one is overloaded. It would be a lot better that way instead of leaving some things to have to try and come back for later."

"That's a great idea. If we have to go slower and rest more it'll still be better than a trip back. We can probably get by without a lot of the things we have but most of them will come in damned handy sooner or later.

"We aren't going to be breaking any speed records anyway and after a while we'll build up our stamina. I just hope we find a good place before all the snow melts. We don't have any wheels to put on in place of the runners."

"Let's have less and less of the talk about still hunting a cave when spring comes. It's hard enough for me to think about dragging one of those things a week," Mary said, so I quit talking about it even though I was still thinking that way.

It took me less than an hour to cut enough small poles to put two of the sleds together and the actual construction was a snap. I thought about extending the width by using poles longer than I really needed but gave that idea up as a bad one. I was afraid I'd have a hard enough time finding a path wide enough to pull the double sled through as it was, without making it even wider.

As the girls got started on the actual packing, I tried to help but they ran me off almost right away. They knew how they wanted to do it and my work wasn't up to snuff. They put me on guard and fire mending duty and told me to keep up the good work. I thought up a little project for me on my own though.

If the Barretts weren't sighted in they were only good to make loud noises or as heavy clubs. Mary had already found the targets Carl had brought to do the job and he'd even found some small target frames that had push-in standards to hold them up. I marked off a hundred yards, give or take, and tried one out.

The son-of-a-bitch was loud and heavy, and the recoil let you know it meant business on either end, but at least whoever bore sighted the ATN scopes had done a good job. I tried the other one next and things looked pretty good. After firing at two hundred and then three hundred yards I moved both scopes a couple of clicks to the right. I don't know what range they were supposed to be centered for but they were pretty much on at five hundred yards and that's as far as I wanted to walk, now anyway. I'd be about four inches high at two hundred yards and that was good enough for me.

Luckily lunch didn't get bypassed after all and it was big portions again. I wasn't griping, but at least I figured out what they were up to. If we ate more now we'd have less to carry when we left. They probably figured if I couldn't keep us in enough game to survive during the trip we'd be better off to just go ahead and die. It would save a lot of walking. Well, that probably wasn't what they were thinking, but I guess it was close enough to reality.

Two mornings later we got out of bed, let the air out of the mattress, and started down with the tent. Once we had it and everything else packed we ate an energy bar and started on our way.

The girls had been packing us all full of food at every meal since we decided we had to move, and it made the energy bar seem like slim pickings. I'd live over it though and it would be better to do the packhorse's job without much on my stomach.

We'd already decided on our direction of travel. We could see the tops of some mountains off to the south - even over the trees. That had to make them damned big ones and if we wanted a cave we'd have to go to the mountains, or at least we thought so.

I don't think we made much more than five miles our first day. While none of the sleds seemed very heavy at first, we weren't in very good shape, especially for that kind of work. We ate an energy bar for lunch too, but stopped in plenty of time to fix a more substantial supper. We didn't pitch the tent but we did air up the bed even though we slept in sleeping bags on top of it.

Two were zipped together for Chris and Mary to double but I kept most of my clothes on and used a different bag in case something came around at night. It would also let me get up and put wood on the fire without waking them. We made sure we had enough gathered for a big fire.

Damned if it didn't work out fine. Chris and Mary stayed warm and I did too. There wouldn't have been any advantage for me to be in with them anyway, because we were way too tired to fuck. I knew we'd be wanting to take some fuck breaks along the way but that's what they'd have to be, breaks. No way in hell we could be sled dogs all day and screw all night.

After two weeks of traveling I thought we were doing pretty well. We needed fewer rest stops and were moving a little faster. I guessed we were making ten to twelve miles a day and we were no longer completely worn out by the time we stopped for the night. We'd even fallen into a semi schedule of only pulling until noon every third day and then knocking off for a little fun in the sleeping bags. Yesterday had been one of those days and I could hardly keep from smiling as I did my duty to God and the sled I was pulling.

We'd only been moving for a little over an hour this morning when Mary stopped us by stopping herself and pointing at something furry and lying still under a tree. There seemed to be a burned out small fire near it and by now I was curious as hell.

Leaving my rifle where it was lying on the sled, I headed over to whatever it was that had fur and could build a fire too. I made sure the hammer straps were off my Glocks and as I got close I pulled out the one that rode in the cross draw holster. As soon as I reached the furry bundle I put it back in place.

It was a girl, or a young woman, and she was asleep or worse. I shook her shoulder gently and her eyes opened. A few seconds later she realized that I was a human and she bared her teeth and showed me that she had a flint blade in her right hand. I backed off and spoke to her softly even though I figured she couldn't understand a word of what I said.

She let her knife hand settle to the ground then and let go of the snarl. She said something to me that I couldn't understand either and I tried to look like I was curious but couldn't make it out. I pointed to my chest then and said "Jack."

"Jack," she said, almost; close enough anyway.

She copied my gesture and spoke her name. It sounded like Reela to me and that's what I said back to her. She smiled a little and nodded her head.

I turned toward Chris and Mary and then called for them to come over. I concentrated on sounding as gentle and polite as I could to keep from frightening Reela. When they reached us I introduced them. At least I felt like Reela understood. I left Chris and Mary to make friends and started gathering squaw wood for at least a small fire.

Reela made a little sound when I put Zippo to kindling and did the trick to get things started. She didn't panic though and she was happy enough to get nearer the fire when it caught up a little.

While she was warming herself I blew up the air mattress and spread the sleeping bags. It was still nearly three hours until noon but we were going to stop here and get the girl warm and fed. I don't know why she was out here alone with nothing but a knife, but I knew damned well she'd die over it if we didn't help. I didn't even consider leaving her where she was.