Free Coyote by David L. Foster Page A

a dangerous air about them though. Not like they might turn on you or knife you in your sleep. But the “I may suddenly kill you if you cross me” kind of danger. I’d hate to be the bully that tried to take her lunch money, or the guy that tried to take that dog’s bone.
    With her odd way of talking and her anti-social nature, the girl’s the kind of person my friends and I would have quietly made fun of in the cafeteria at school. Now, though... It seems like that’s all past. Now I’m volunteering to go where she’s going just on the hunch that she’s got what it takes to live in this fucked-up world.
    I hope I’m right.

4
     
    They set off walking. Close by the warehouse they had spent the night in, they stepped into a country store at the edge of the road. It was pretty well picked over, but they split up to search the store anyhow. She did find some bulk oatmeal and a shelf almost entirely full of canned vegetables. Once she opened the lid of the barrel for it, the dog seemed to enjoy the oatmeal, so she let it eat its fill. She then scooped some more into plastic bags and put them in her pack. She took four cans of vegetables and added them to her pack as well.
    The man and the teenage boy wandered over and started grabbing some of the canned vegetables as well.
    “Here you go,” said the man, tossing one can to the teenager.
    He caught it, then looked at it in horror. “Oh, god! Beans!” He actually skipped back from the offending can and gave a little shudder, causing the already giggling man to double over with laughter. Even she smiled, before she turned back to the shelf to select what she wanted. She heard the man walk away to explore other aisles, while the teenage boy stayed, carefully selecting canned vegetables that looked nothing like beans.
    When she had all she needed, she looked over at him. She saw him filling his pack with cans until it bulged. She smirked at him as he lifted it, his eyes bulging at the surprising weight.
    “Too much for you?”
    She could tell he didn’t want to look weak in front of his new companions. “It’s all right,” he lied. “I can carry a pretty heavy load.”
    She looked at him. He was big, but soft. The frame of a football player but the padding of a video game player. She didn’t think he would last.
    “Good,” she said, and placed three more cans into an exterior pocket of his already-full pack. “Who knows how often there will be so much food?”
    Then she stepped back, looking at him. “Like a mule,” she said, turning away and making her way out of the store. She had meant it as an insult but for some reason the boy smiled.
    The others followed her, man, boy, and dog, exiting the store and heading generally east on a winding rural highway. Except for that break, it was steady walking until afternoon. She tended to walk a little in front of the other two, as the dog took turns sometimes walking near the group at the side of the road and sometimes moving off into the fields to carry out its own investigations of the land they passed. Twice that morning the dog stopped in front of her and growled, looking at a house some distance from the road. Both times she detoured off to the other side of the road, tromping through neighboring fields to give a wide berth to whatever the dog sensed before returning to the highway. The others grumbled a bit, but followed. They gave the houses wary looks as they passed by, but nothing ever came of it and it and the houses soon passed from view.
    As they moved east, they moved away from downtown Portland, and into more open country. By late morning they had passed through the tiny town of Damascus, [6] whose biggest offerings were a Safeway on one side of the road and a Bi-Mart on the other side. [7] She did not stop. She offered no reason, but neither did her followers ask for one.
    As they walked, the man and the boy carried on a conversation.  The man did most of the talking. She ignored it. She did not enjoy