The Raven's Gift - Don Rearden [39]
He started pulling again. After a while he stopped and asked her, “What if we were both outcasts? Wouldn’t we still travel together?”
She ran her mitten across the top of the snow and tasted it. He took off his glove and held his palms against his cheeks to warm them.
He tightened the rope about his waist and pressed forward, trying to ignore the hunger burning in his stomach and the cold fire scorching the tips of his toes.
“If we were, you would have killed me, to have the food you saved for yourself. Maybe eat me with salt and pepper. I jokes, John. I’m no good for one of those people. Besides, we’re not like them, are we.”
She said it like a statement. Not a question.
14
The figure stood in the doorway for a moment and moved toward the kitchen and then stumbled over the first bodies. A gasp came from across the gym and John watched as the person half-crawled, half-walked over the corpses toward him. He was no hunter.
John stepped back a little, waited for the right moment, and flipped on the flashlight, shining the beam straight into the man’s eyes. The man jumped to his feet and shielded his face.
“That’s far enough.”
The man, wearing a tattered fleece jacket and Sorel Packs, shuffled another step forward and pushed a woman’s leg out of the way.
He shone the light across the gym. A glint of steel by the door caught his eye. He shone the light at it and spotted two portable generators he hadn’t seen before.
“Start clearing the path to the door and I won’t shoot you.”
“That food’s going to make you sick. You can’t take it. I came to tell you to leave it. Going to make you both real sick.”
John shone the light on his pistol for a moment, for effect, and said, “Turn around slowly and start clearing me a path. I’m going to be right behind you. Try anything and you’re dead. I should have already shot you.”
The man turned slowly and started pushing bodies out of the way. John tilted the handcart back with one hand while holding the pistol and flashlight against the top box with the other. He started rolling through the path of bodies. The flashlight and the pistol pointed at the man’s back.
The man began kicking the corpses out of the way with his boots. The sounds of his boots hitting them and the rough skin scratching against the floor made John’s stomach turn again. He swallowed hard and steadied his breathing.
“They’re going to get you,” the man said.
“Are there more people out there?”
“Not out there. In here.”
John flashed his light around the gym, suddenly paranoid.
“Who?”
“These people,” he said. “You’re stealing from the dead. That food is theirs. This is their grave now and you’re stealing from them. We don’t take from the dead.”
The man stopped pushing the bodies away and turned toward John. With the light shining into his dark brown eyes the man stared at him, unflinching.
“You shouldn’t have disturbed them,” he said.
“Why did you come in here, then?”
“I’m not the one stealing from them.”
“Yeah, but I’m not the one kicking their corpses. Come on, we’re almost there. Keep moving.”
“Out there, he’ll get you.”
“Who?”
He looked over his shoulder and grinned. “You know who.”
“Keep moving.”
Just before they reached the door he told the man to stop. He didn’t want to walk out into an ambush. He needed a moment to think. If a group of them were waiting in the hall, he and the girl would be easy prey. If he shot the man now, he wouldn’t be keeping his word. He didn’t want the girl seeing him lie like that. He didn’t know where the girl had hidden—he didn’t want to call her out yet.
He wheeled the handcart within three feet of the man. “Okay, once we get to the door I want you to stop. Then you’re going to turn around and wheel this cart in front of you. Don’t test me.”
Near the door he told the man to stop again. The man turned and