Gathering water became a function she performed out of habit, not the task that used to fill her with a sense of urgency. She ate quickly and tasted nothing, but her real prey never showed his face. Lynn killed fifty coyotes in a few days, but never saw Big Bastard. Her bullets flew without thought for size or guilt, or even the ammunition that Mother had always warned was precious. By the fifth day, the smell of rot filled the air. The only thing that cut through it was the tang of gunpowder when she took another down.
Lynn’s eyelids were growing heavy, her cheek resting against the warm rifle stock when a dark cloud of buzzards rose from the field, cackling anxiously about their disturbed meal. A man was coming across the field from the southwest, a handkerchief across his face to ward off the smell of the dead. Lynn squinted into the scope, watching as the he skirted the corpses scattered in his path. His left leg dragged, the foot turned awkwardly inward.
Recognition startled Lynn. The loss of Mother had struck her so deeply she’d forgotten there was one other person she could name in the world—Stebbs. His halting pace slowed as he came toward a boulder that rested in the middle of the field. He rested on it, mopping his neck from the strain of walking the distance from his cabin.
Lynn studied him through the scope. The twisted foot she remembered from years of watching him lope back and forth on his daily routine in the woods. The red handkerchief she’d seen before too, often tied around his head if he was sweating, which seemed to be always.
He pulled something out of his pocket and held it up in the air. A piece of paper fluttered brightly in the wind. Lynn turned her barrel slightly into the setting sun so that rays flashed off it. He saw her signal and set the paper on the boulder, using another stone to weigh it down. Then he turned and slowly made his way back to his shack in the woods.
Lynn debated. Going out would be difficult. Without Mother, even trips to the pond were a test of nerves. With no one to cover her back, every step felt like a reprieve from death, each silent second without a sniper’s bullet an unprayed-for miracle. The walk itself wouldn’t be easy. Her ankle was much better, but the boulder was a half mile out. She tightened the laces on her boot as she thought through her options. Anyone watching the house would take it now, while she was gone. There would be no chance for her to sprint back and defend it, in her condition.
She slid behind the wheel of the truck cautiously, careful not to bang her ankle against the running board. The old engine fired to life and she backed out of the pole barn, sick at the thought of leaving the house even for a moment. She drove through the field without bothering to swerve around offal, oblivious to the riddled coyote bodies underneath her tires. When she reached the rock she left the engine running, moving as quickly as possible to get the note and drive back home.
She didn’t open the folded paper until she was back on the roof. When she did, she snorted with unexpected laughter.
“Can you read?” it asked.
Lynn wrote her response. “Yes, I can.”
She thought a second, then added another line.
“Asshole.”
Seven
Lynn’s war against the coyotes had caused a complication. Deer wouldn’t venture within her range. After dropping her response to Stebbs at the rock, she tried to ignore the blooming hunger in her belly. Long months of vegetables for breakfast, lunch, and dinner lay before her. There was still a chance that she could hunt, take down a small deer sufficient for herself. If she wanted meat for the winter she’d have to leave the roof.
She lay prone, silently watching everything around her. Stebbs had not come for her note yet. Lynn bit her lip as she watched his red bandanna moving through the woods as he went through his evening routine, as familiar to her as her own. Smoke bloomed to the east and the south, and Lynn looked at both pillars with suspicion.
She had come to think of the people to the east as the Streamers, which was a nicer name than Mother had used when they kept burning green wood. The lone boot print at the edge of the pond strayed through her mind. It could have been a Streamer, but what use would they have for her water? If it had been one of the men from the southern camp she doubted he would’ve overlooked the chance to take the house while it was unguarded. Stebbs was not in doubt; never in all her life had he approached her pond.
The white smoke of the Streamers dispersed into the evening sky, sending out a gray pall over the fields. There was no breeze; the smoke hung densely in the air. An evening fog rolled in from the west to join the haze, making the boulder stand out in stark contrast. As Lynn watched, a figured appeared beside it. She raised her binoculars to watch Stebbs.