Free The road by Cormac McCarthy

war and after that the women, perhaps
a dozen in number, some of them pregnant, and lastly a supplementary consort of
catamites illclothed against the cold and fitted in dogcollars and yoked each
to each. All passed on. They lay listening. Are they gone, Papa? Yes, they're
gone. Did you see them? Yes.
    Were they the bad guys? Yes, they were the bad
guys. There's a lot of them, those bad guys. Yes there are. But they're gone.
They stood and brushed themselves off, listening to the silence in the
distance. Where are they going, Papa? I dont know. They're on the move. It's
not a good sign. Why isnt it a good sign? It just isnt. We need to get the map
and take a look.
     
    They pulled the cart from the brush with which
they'd covered it and he raised it up and piled the blankets in and the coats
and they pushed on out to the road and stood looking where the last of that
ragged horde seemed to hang like an afterimage in the disturbed air.
     
    In the afternoon it started to snow again. They
stood watching the pale gray flakes sift down out of the sullen murk. They
trudged on. A frail slush forming over the dark surface of the road. The boy
kept falling behind and he stopped and waited for him. Stay with me, he said.
You walk too fast. I'll go slower. They went on. You're not talking again. I'm
talking. You want to stop? I always want to stop. We have to be more careful. I
have to be more careful. I know. We'll stop. Okay? Okay.
    We just have to find a place. Okay.
     
    The falling snow curtained them about. There was
no way to see anything at either side of the road. He was coughing again and
the boy was shivering, the two of them side by side under the sheet of plastic,
pushing the grocery cart through the snow. Finally he stopped. The boy was
shaking uncontrollably. We have to stop, he said. It's really cold. I know.
Where are we? Where are we? Yes.
    I dont know. If we were going to die would you
tell me? I dont know. We're not going to die.
     
    They left the cart overturned in a field of sedge
and he took the coats and the blankets wrapped in the plastic tarp and they set
out. Hold on to my coat, he said. Dont let go. They crossed through the sedge
to a fence and climbed through, holding down the wire for each other with their
hands. The wire was cold and it creaked in the staples. It was darkening fast.
They went on. What they came to was a cedar wood, the trees dead and black but
still full enough to hold the snow. Beneath each one a precious circle of dark
earth and cedar duff.
     
    They settled under a tree and piled the blankets
and coats on the ground and he wrapped the boy in one of the blankets and set
to raking up the dead needles in a pile. He kicked a cleared place in the snow
out where the fire wouldnt set the tree alight and he carried wood from the
other trees, breaking off the limbs and shaking away the snow. When he struck
the lighter to the rich tinder the fire crackled instantly and he knew that it
would not last long. He looked at the boy. I've got to go for more wood, he
said. I'll be in the neighborhood. Okay? Where's the neighborhood? It just
means I wont be far. Okay.
     
    The snow by now was half a foot on the ground. He
floundered out through the trees pulling up the fallen branches where they
stuck out of the snow and by the time he had an armload and made his way back
to the lire it had burned down to a nest of quaking embers. He threw the
branches on the lire and set out again. Hard to stay ahead. The woods were
getting dark and the firelight did not reach far. If he hurried he only grew
faint. When he looked behind him the boy was trudging through snow half way to
his knees gathering limbs and piling them in his arms.
     
    The snow fell nor did it cease to fall. He woke
all night and got up and coaxed the fire to life again. He'd unfolded the tarp
and propped one end of it up beneath the tree to try and reflect back the heat
from the fire. He looked