“Okay,” Lynn said, surprised at his freedom to wander without worry. His little shack must hold nothing of value, and his source of water well hidden. She took a sideways glance at his injured foot. “It’s a decent hike.”
“Yup.”
“I could go,” she offered hesitantly. “If you’d stay and watch over the pond.”
Stebbs rotated his twisted foot for a moment, considering. “You trust me to do that?”
“You could have killed us at any time.” Whether Mother had liked him or not, Stebbs had been a constant presence that never threatened them, even when their defenses were down. “You don’t need our water.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t.”
Lynn nodded, letting the conversation drop there. To ask where he got his own would be the highest of betrayals in their world. “So, two days, do you think?”
“Two days of no smoke from the stream, and I’ll come.”
“All right.”
They nodded stiffly and parted ways, each picking their path carefully through the bloated, rotting bodies of the coyotes.
Eight
“I can’t go right now,” Lynn argued, her arms bloody from the elbow down. A small deer carcass hung from the tree, a pile of organs and intestines underneath it. Stebbs looked critically at the jagged cut she’d made from clavicle to pubic bone. Mother’s stronger, more confident slashes had looked much neater.
Stebbs ignored her protest while he looked at the tarp she’d rigged around some green saplings, tepee style. “You going to smoke it?”
“That’s the plan. The shed’s gone, but that tarp should do the trick for now.”
“It’ll draw attention.”
“They know I’m here.”
“Don’t know you’re alone,” he countered. “If they send someone for a look and they don’t see Lau—your mother, you’ll be in a world of hurt.”
She ignored him while she skinned subcutaneous fat off the carcass. He had a good point, but she didn’t want to admit that she’d made a mistake in shooting the deer too early to freeze the meat.
“There’s another way, you know,” Stebbs said. “You can salt it, hang it in the trees to cure.”
“I don’t have enough salt.”
“I do. I’ll butcher this while you’re gone; you split with me whatever the Streamers had.”
Lynn didn’t ask how he had enough salt that he could offer to preserve a whole deer for a neighbor. The process of rotting had begun the moment the heart stopped pumping, and already the flies were gathering at the folds of the wound she’d opened.
“Go get your salt then,” she said stiffly.
Walking away from the house felt like a crime, even though she trusted Stebbs. The familiar roof looked distinctly odd from a distance, the tilted angles of the upstairs bedrooms at odds with the lightly sloping section over the kitchen where she and Mother had always camped. When it was blocked from view by trees, Lynn clamped down on the surge of betrayal that filled her gut. She pushed the ever-present worry of whether or not Mother would approve to the back of her mind, as she crossed the clover field she’d seen every day of her life but not set foot in once.
She had tucked her hair under the stocking cap, a simple gender disguise that Mother had taught her, and the cool breeze brought goose bumps to her exposed neck. They prickled down her chest and the length of her arms. Autumn was gorgeous, with the leaves changing and falling, spinning to the ground to be crushed under her boots. But their death and downfall served as warning echoes to the other living things around them: the cold is coming, be prepared.
Lynn was confident the Streamers were dead. Their meager, green fires had sputtered, then stopped entirely. Anything in a weakened state would not have survived the past two nights without a fire. She kept her rifle in the crook of her elbow as she picked her way through the long grasses toward the stream. There was no doubt that the camp of men had also noticed the passing of the Streamers. Buzzards wouldn’t be the only scavengers picking over their campsite.
In other circumstances, it would have been a pleasant walk. The countryside was resplendent with color, the sky a bright blue. The breeze shifted the grass around her, wafting the faintly spicy scent of green leaves turning brown into her face. But Lynn’s eyes saw only usefulness in these small miracles. The fading greens and yellows allowed her brown coveralls to blend nicely with the surroundings; the unclouded sky gave a little more warmth to the earth. The breeze shifting the grass covered the sounds of her movement, the slight fragrance from broken stalks masked her scent as she neared the stream.
She approached the camp from downwind, studying the area around her for other intruders. A squirrel chattered angrily and she dropped closer to the earth, aware that it was signaling distress. Lynn crept forward, ignoring the brambles that tugged at her as she moved.