Survival Instincts, page 35
“S-Stay…a…a-awake.”
“Damn right.” Lynn got up, but dizziness overtook her instantly, and she had to lean forward and rest her head against the truck’s hood before she could straighten fully.
Skeever tried to get to his feet.
Lynn held up her hand. “No, Skeever. No. Stay. Y-You stay with Dani. Do you understand me? Stay with Dani.” She took a few steps backward.
Skeever whined and limped to Dani’s feet but stopped there. He watched her intently.
“Stay.” Lynn turned and walked off, willing herself not to look back.
Lynn didn’t believe in a higher power. Some people still worshipped gods—either through the remnants of Old-World religions or by way of newly discovered pantheons and messiahs—but Lynn was sure life just happened the way it happened without outside influence. Even with that extreme certainty, she felt a flicker of doubt as she walked into the first building that emerged from the darkness and found it not only empty but easily defendable. It even had a separate room she could stash Richard’s body in.
The building was an old bakery. Its display window was almost too dirty to see through but was intact; the door closed and locked with a deadbolt, and the kitchen had a large back exit and double doors she could shut behind the cart to keep the smell down. It was perfect, but she didn’t know where she was going to find the energy to get everyone there.
Lynn knew she was on the verge of physical collapse. She was holding off a complete breakdown on willpower alone, but that wasn’t going to sustain her much longer.
When Lynn returned, Skeever lifted his head. He’d pressed up against Dani’s side, hopefully keeping her warm.
Lynn smiled at him and dropped down by Dani’s side. She gently laid her hand on her chest. “Hey, you. Did you do your job?”
Dani’s eyelids fluttered. She licked her dry lips. “Y-Yes.” Her voice had lost even more strength. The wind tore the word to shreds long before it reached Lynn’s ears, forcing her to lip-read.
“That’s good. Very good. I’m going to be making some noise, but Skeever’s here, and you’ll be safe.” She stroked Skeever’s head before she undid the bindings that held a blanket to Dani’s pack and spread it out over her and Skeever. “If you just do your job and stay awake until I come back, I’m going to get you somewhere safe and near a fire. How does that sound? Good?”
Dani nodded slowly. Her eyelids drooped, but she stubbornly refused to let them close entirely.
Lynn stroked her hair. “Proud of you.” She leaned down, ignoring the pain in her protesting back and chest, and kissed her forehead. “I’ll be quick.”
Dani sighed and seemed to tilt her head toward her a little.
After a moment of hesitation, Lynn kissed her lips as well.
Dani hummed, and a tiny smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.
Lynn kissed her again. “I’ll be quick,” she repeated. She held her hand up in front of Skeever. “Stay with Dani.”
He laid his head down on the pavement and sighed.
Picking up their heavy packs and hauling them to the cart was painful already, but pulling the cart to the back of the bakery was agony on her battered body. Any pressure on the chewed-on muscles in her shoulder caused white spots to dance in front of her eyes, but if she instead used her other arm, her forearm flashed in pain. By the time she closed the outer doors of the bakery’s kitchen behind the cart, her vision had deteriorated to a fuzzy blur with white edges.
She didn’t give herself time for the fog to clear. Instead, she made her way through the bakery—and walked squarely into the doorpost; she was that dizzy. If she was going to collapse, it would be by Dani’s side.
All the car husks, lamp posts, and tree trunks she had viewed as obstacles all day now became her biggest allies because they held her up as she scooted along them toward her destination. She stopped to catch her breath and wipe her forehead but found it dry. That was probably not good since she was working hard enough to build up a sweat. It was another problem she ignored because there was nothing she could do about it right now.
Neither Dani nor Skeever had moved, so she could find them again with nothing but pale moonlight. While Skeever raised his head upon her arrival, Dani didn’t react.
“Hey, Dani.” She stroked her cheek. “Did you do your job?”
Dani didn’t respond. Her eyes were closed.
“Dani?” Lynn’s heart beat faster, which worsened the throbbing in her shoulder and forearm to the point of distraction. She checked Dani’s pulse with shaking fingers. It was slow, but it was there. The rush of relief made her light-headed.
Skeever licked Dani’s cheek.
She worked her hands under Dani’s shoulders, then wrapped her undamaged forearm under her breasts, gripped her own wrist, and squatted behind Dani. When her vision stopped swimming, she pushed up and dragged Dani along the ground.
The second Lynn put them into motion, Dani started to scream and resist.
Lynn groaned and sagged to the ground, keeping Dani against her body. “Q-Quiet!” She rasped the word against Dani’s ear. “I’m sorry it hurts, but you can’t stay out here.”
Dani continued to squirm and make small noises of pain and panic.
Holding on to her hurt, but Lynn wasn’t going to let go. “D-Do you trust me, Dani? Do you trust me? Then stop struggling and let me get you to safety.”
After a few more moments of whimpers and jerks, Dani went limp. Her head fell forward. Either she’d passed out again, or she trusted Lynn enough to drag her.
Lynn didn’t have time to wonder which it was. Every second she expended energy on something not absolutely vital, she was damaging their odds of getting through the night alive. She pushed up again. It hurt enough for spots of light to dance in front of her eyes. In fact, her entire vision went hazy, but she was rapidly getting used to that.
Skeever followed her to the bakery, but he avoided putting weight on his leg. He entered ahead of Lynn, found a corner, and curled up. Lynn sank to the floor by one of the small tables that had once seated the people who had eaten the bread and cake depicted on the wall above the counter. Lyn didn’t care about the Old-World people, but the tables and chairs were made of wood and could serve as fuel for the fire she was about to make.
When Lynn put her down, Dani whimpered.
“Damn, I forgot your blanket.” It would have to wait until she got a fire going. Lynn got up, found her balance, and waddled over to the door to put the deadbolt on. Just that simple act filled her with relief: no matter what else happened, they were safe from further harm. She rested her forehead against the cool glass of the door and inhaled deeply. “Get it done.” Tears welled up as the enormity of all the tasks ahead of her settled on her aching shoulders. She sniffed. “Just turn around, find a way to get a fire going, and get it done.”
Every whack with her tomahawk caused light-headedness. Every time she bent forward to pick up another chair to put it on a table, her vision swam. She shook her hands to get the tremble out of them before she searched through Dani’s pack for anything to start a fire with. It took precious seconds for the bundle of gathered dried leaves to catch flame.
Finally! Lynn was painfully aware of every second that ticked away. Dani moaned every once in a while, so she was still alive, but that was all Lynn knew for sure about her condition, and while she was busy fire building, she couldn’t step away to find out more.
When Lynn finally dared to sit up and feed the fire in a way that allowed her to check on her, Dani’s eyeballs flitted under her eyelids as if she was suffering through a terrible nightmare. That’s because she is. This whole damn thing was one big nightmare.
Her vision blurred. She blinked, but it didn’t clear. Lynn frowned and looked around. Smoke hung heavily in the room. Shit. She had been too rushed to think about the logistics of making a fire indoors, but she would have to figure out a way to ventilate. Lacking the time and energy to time to think about a better solution, she took her tomahawk to the small window above the door. It shattered, and Lynn turned away to avoid the shards. Right away the smoke escaped to the outdoors. Good, problem solved. Next.
She dragged Dani closer to the fire.
Dani’s groans of complaint were the most beautiful sounds Lynn had ever heard because they meant she was hanging in there, and she was still at least partly responsive to her surroundings. Dani turned her face toward the fire as soon as she felt it and seemed to relax a little.
Lynn sat down by the fire and chewed through a large chunk of dried meat Dani had cut off the deer leg the family had preserved. Had that been just this morning? Hard to believe. It was good to get food in her system, though. Maybe it would give her some fuel for what was ahead. Dani had lost a lot of blood, so she needed animal protein as well. Speaking of which…
She clenched the meat between her teeth and shrugged off her wet jacket. The stabs of pain had become part of her ever-increasingly hellish existence, so she hardly noticed them anymore. She draped the jacket over her knees in the hope the back would dry. Getting her shirt off was more painful because the wool had stuck to her open wounds. She suffered through it stoically and twisted her neck to take in as much of the bite marks on the front of her shoulder as she could.
Not as bad as I thought. It certainly wasn’t good, but it wasn’t as devastating as she’d feared with all the blood. Much like with the wolf, her jacket had limited the damage, but there were two holes just below her clavicle big enough to push the tip of her pinkie into. The muscle below was pierced, but she could still move her hand and arm—although with a lot of pain—so at least the damage wasn’t disabling. Since she’d moved with the bear as much as possible, her collarbone was still intact. If the redness that had soaked into her sweater was anything to judge by, she’d lost quite a bit of blood, which was probably why she was so light-headed. She probed the back of her shoulder for damage, but her front had definitely taken the worst of the punishment.
Lynn slid her sweater back on to preserve body heat and chewed up the last of bit of deer jerky. Think. They had food left, but not a lot of meat or cheese. Think. They needed meat, and there was a dead bear outside. The logical conclusion was that they were having bear for dinner. Exhaustion weighed her down at the thought of having to go outside again, but it had to be done.
Better just get it over with now. She stood with a groan, got her coat back on, and shuddered as the wet wool of her sweater settled more firmly against her back. As miserable as she was, she did feel slightly stronger after soaking up the heat of the fire and getting some food in her system. It would have to be enough.
She didn’t want to go out without a fire. Thankfully, she had something that could withstand heat: the bowl that had held the candle. She untied the shovel from the cart and used it to scoop a few charred bits of wood into the bowl, then added small chunks of splintered furniture as fuel for the journey. One of Dani’s spare sweaters served as protection for her hand as she balanced the hot bowl in it. With her arm outstretched and the other hand holding her tomahawk as tightly as her shoulder would allow, Lynn slipped out and pulled the door shut behind her. She couldn’t bolt it, but she wasn’t going to be gone long.
It was maybe three hundred feet to the bear, but they were terrifying. Lynn’s heart pounded in her throat as she crept along, searching for the glow of eyes in the light of her wildly dancing flame. Nothing pounced on her, and before long, the splayed out form of the bear came into view. Maybe I can also pull Dani’s spear—
The carcass moved.
Lynn jumped back and almost dropped the bowl. She fumbled for balance as she peered at the bear’s body. She knew it was dead; it had to be dead, but then it made noise too, a small growl that sounded nothing like the bellow it had thrown out when attacking them.
Two yellow dots blinked into view in the flickering light.
Lynn’s stomach soared up into her throat as fear flashed hotly through her. I can’t fight anymore. She was too tired; she had nothing left.
Then the eyes and the fuzzy form around them tore away from the larger form and rushed over.
Lynn took another step back, but then she realized what she was looking at: a bear cub. She exhaled in relief.
It was a miniature version of its presumed mother, but Lynn felt no love for it. One day, it would grow into a specimen as big as the one that had all but killed Dani.
She put the bowl down and remained in a crouched position to await the cub. It couldn’t be more than half of Skeever’s size with big ears, big paws, and a nose it had yet to grow into. She slowly put her tomahawk on the ground and pulled her knife from her boot.
The cub uttered a little growl that sounded more plaintive than aggressive. It stumbled over its own paws on the way to her.
Lynn’s fried brain finally put two and two together. “So you’re why your mom went after us, huh? Is your den under the overpass?” She gripped the heft of the blade. “This part is going to suck for you, but else you would slowly starve to death, and so would we.”
The cub head-butted her knee.
She reached around its muzzle, yanked it over, pressed her knee onto its belly, and pushed its head up to expose its neck. The cub had just enough time to struggle and grunt before Lynn cut its throat.
Lynn clenched her jaw and dropped the knife. She grabbed the front paws to keep herself clear of any scratching nails as the cub gasped for breath, whimpered, and fought. While she watched it struggle, reality caught up with her. You could have avoided this. If you had paid attention to where you were going, you wouldn’t have lured the bear.
Her prey went limp.
Now you have to make it right. Lynn lifted the cub’s lifeless body up by the neck and stood. She had a chance now: ten pounds of bear meat in an easy-to-carry package had been delivered to her. More importantly, the small body held the key to Dani’s survival. Blood was literally much easier to swallow than meat, and all energy Dani could preserve was vital. Maybe something was watching over her after all—finally.
Lynn hurried back to the bakery with renewed vigor, pausing only to gather the fire bowl and blanket.
Nothing had changed inside, and Lynn hadn’t expected it to. Dani was sleeping or passed out, but her heartbeat was steady upon inspection.
Skeever got up and hobbled over to check her loot, but she sent him off with a pat on the head and the promise of a proper medical exam and food later on. Lynn didn’t have time now; she had to skin the cub, drain it, cut it up, roast the meat, and boil the blood. And she couldn’t just feed Dani a bowl of blood either. Her body would reject it because it was so heavy and metallic. She’d be throwing up before she got halfway through. No, Lynn would have to make a porridge-type thing that she could feed her over the course of the night and into the following day, a few spoonfuls at a time.
Lynn put her hands on her sides. All she wanted was to lie down, curl herself around Dani, and go to sleep, but she couldn’t. She took as deep a breath as her painful ribs allowed. “Time to get to work.”
It was well past midnight when Lynn found herself nodding off over three tins with identical contents: a bit of water, flour, whatever goat cheese she’d been able to find, and bear blood. She stirred each in turn as they heated up over the fire. Her porridge had the thickness and consistency of pumpkin soup but with a dark pink hue. An acrid stench that Lynn could taste on her tongue hung heavily in the air. It was like licking her knife but ten times worse, and it drowned out the scent of sizzling bear meat on a stick.
Even Dani reacted to it: her features had scrunched up the moment the blood had heated, and the frown had stuck as the stench lingered.
The mixture in the first of the tins started to bubble beyond the head of foam that had formed.
Lynn forced herself to wakefulness. She took the tin off the fire and tested a spoonful of its contents. The heavy metallic taste tripled, and the mixture of salt and sweet caused her to shudder. She swallowed before she could fully register its flavor nuances. “I’ll never learn to appreciate that.” She’d eaten a lot of meals featuring blood as a kid. Nothing went to waste, after all, when an animal was killed—especially in a settlement. The other two tins came to a boil as well, and Lynn took them off the coals.
“Dani?” Lynn carried the first tin and her spoon over. She knelt down by Dani’s head and stroked her cheek. “Dinnertime.”
Dani’s features relaxed under the touch, but that was all.
Lynn tapped her cheek. “Dani, wake up.”
“Nnnggh.” Dani swallowed, and her eyelids fluttered.
Lynn smiled, far more relieved to see such obvious signs of life than she had expected. “That’s it. Can you open your eyes?”
Dani struggled visibly with the request, but then her eyelids finally lifted all the way and eyes the color of hazelnuts appeared. After a few seconds, they focused on Lynn’s, and Dani whimpered.
“Hey.” Lynn swallowed against the lump in her throat. She took Dani’s hand and squeezed lightly. “You suck at your job, you know?” The world went blurry as tears welled up.
“L-Ly—” The whispered rasp sounded painful. Dani’s eyes closed again.
“Yeah, right here. We’re safe. I made you food. It’s not going to taste good, but it’s good for you. Do you think you can help me by eating it?”
“W-Wha—?”
“Bear’s blood, mostly, but with some cheese and flour so you’ll be able to stomach it better.” Lynn scooted until she could lift Dani’s head upon her crossed ankles.
Dani groaned.
“Just relax. Let me move you. Try not to put tension on your stomach, or you’ll bleed more.” She prepared a small spoonful of the warm mixture and leaned over Dani’s head. “Open wide.”
