Chapter 4

The twang of a snare was unmistakable in the predawn quiet. Kayla held still in her sleeping bag, listening for any rustle of her prey. It was the time where the balance between dark and light was unmistakable. She could feel the magic that was the very soul of humanity waking pull at her. Had her prey given any wriggle of life, she would have shot from her sleeping bag to wring its neck quickly, but the prevailing silence let her stay snug in her bag. She was too hungry to give up valuable protein but too tenderhearted to let it die a slow and agonizing death, tangled in her snares.

As dawn broke she struggled from her bag. Even though it was now late spring, she could see her breath and she gave a silent thanks to her father for insisting on purchasing sleeping bags designed for negative twenty even though West Virginia never got to such a chill. Kayla was glad too that he was taken her camping when the weather was brisk as it meant that she knew a few survival tricks: keep your socks for tomorrow in your bag, sleep naked to allow the greatest amount of radiated heat, and if it's going to be brutally cold, keep your water bottle in your bag to keep it from freezing.

Kayla stumbled from her two man tent and gave it a quick look. It would be safe enough, tucked in next to the four wheeler, until she returned from checking her trap line. She trudged off into the semi-dark, stomping to get her feet fully into their boots.

She'd stopped close to what she thought was Midlothian, Maryland the night before after pushing the quad to the limit of its range. She had stayed off the interstate but managed to find a gas station that still operated by credit card just as her extra gas was depleting. She had filled both the quad and her two jerry cans with gas, forsaking weight in fuel for water and food. She'd been forced to leave a small cooler with the last of her frozen meat in order to carry both cans. She'd agonized over it, but in the end, if she was to reach the edges of the D.C. area she needed the gas.

Now, with the sun peaking over the horizon, she was checking trap lines set up the night before in hopes that she could make up for the lost protein. Luckily for her, the sharp twang that had awoken her had been caused by a hapless bunny bouncing through her line. Kayla removed the bunny from the trap, grabbed it by the head, and gave it a quick, sharp swing to insure it was dead before adding it too her small pack. She traced the route of the rest of the line, but the one bunny was her only catch. Disappointed, she disassembled each trap as she came across it.

By eight o'clock Kayla had finished her walk and was busy dressing the rabbit by a small fire. She was scared to have a large fire going, possibly attracting attention, but had no other way to cook her rabbit. She skinned, cooked and ate the bunny, then kicked out her small Dakota fire before she could attract the attention of any surviving locals. This was her third night away from the shelter of her home and she was still afraid she'd be attacked by marauding locals. Prior to her departure the news, such as it was, described the situation along the eastern seaboard as desperate. There were few people who had survived the flu and fewer still who had survived the nuclear exchange.

Broadcast news had ceased after the first wave of nuclear exchange but Kayla had still found a few websites updating the progress of the war. As far as Kayla knew, Russian forces had made it onto U.S. soil in places like Washington, Oregon, and Montana but nowhere else. One website had speculated that the Russians and/or the Chinese had made it as far as the edges of D.C. but after the complete nuclear destruction of the District, it seemed that even if they had they had little effect there now.

Kayla gave the straps on the last precious section of gear a final tug then considered her map. Her GPS told her that she should be just south of Midlothian, MD but she wasn't sure how accurate that would be. One of her websites had told of a brief space war, knocking out satellites, possibly the ones carrying the GPS signal, but she couldn't confirm it with any accuracy. Sighing, she resigned herself to pushing north, into the town she was skirting, to check her location. Surely one building in town would have the name of the town on it. She gunned the quad's engine and headed out of the woods.

Kayla was scared to follow roads but had no other reliable way into town. Roads were meant for travel which meant that she was likely to encounter people, something she was hesitant to do. At this point, she was on edge enough to shoot her own grandmother had the dear lady had been alive. A night of fitful sleep after weeks of fitful sleep and now out of her element, Kayla's nerves were shot. In her mind, scenes of ambush and violence replayed. As she reached the edge of town she stopped to settle her father's automatic shot gun across her lap, safety off. She stroked the gun lovingly. Sure, a gun was not her father, but in his absence it filled the gaps.

As Kayla entered the edge of town she could already see the wake of devastation the flu had wrought. Few, if any, buildings had escaped what rioting the small town had hosted. Most buildings had missing windows and some were crumpled at the edges from vehicles crashing or scraping into them. Kayla paused to turn her engine off so she could listen for sounds of life in the center of town. Only the sound of Kayla's breath interrupted the chilling silence in the town.

Kayla confirmed that she was in Midlothian when she found the post office late in the morning. That fact heartened her because it meant she was only a few miles from the local coal mine, its rail stop and an airport. Dr. Gray had told her that if she ever needed to rejoin civilization to go somewhere where they could find power. All civilizations required power, whether that came from human beings of coal, they needed it. Kayla, having been raised to be a mining engineer, immediately thought of coal mines and had set out to the nearest big facility. Midlothian and Frostburg had hosted the largest facility in the area, but Cumberland, 13 miles east, was the nearest airport. Kayla fretted, wondering if whatever people survived would be more likely to use rail or airplane to transport coal, but finally decided air travel was the easiest to overcome a trapped or nuked railway. On that decision, she finally moved eastward towards Cumberland, as well as the District.