Free Coyote by David L. Foster Page B

pointless talk.
    In the afternoon, having left Damascus a few miles behind them, the highway passed by farm fields, nurseries, and the occasional cluster of two or three houses. At one point, marked by nothing different than any other, she stopped, setting down her pack and taking a drink from her canteen.
    The others, who had been following a few paces behind her as they chatted and walked, approached, looking curious.
    “What’s up?” asked the man. “Did we arrive?” He smiled, indicating that he was making a joke.
    She looked to the teenage boy. “Mule. Turn around.” He frowned in perplexity for a moment, whether at the command or at his new name she was not sure, but then complied.
    “Heh, Mule.” The man’s laughing eyes looked at the younger man. “Can I call you Ass?”
    Embarrassed again, the Mule simply looked to the ground.
    She reached up to unlace the top of his pack (his meek manner kept making her forget how much taller he was than her) and pulled out six cans at random. Unsurprisingly, none of them were green beans.
    “Ah, lunchtime,” said the man, catching on. “Good thing, too.”
    She squatted down, digging into her own pack for the can opener she had found a few weeks ago. Finding it, she opened all the cans and set them out on the pavement. The dog had trotted over, sensing food, and she let it investigate the cans. It sniffed at each one, and even gave an experimental lick to a can of peas, but didn’t seem to want any of them. She wondered if dogs ate vegetables at all, and figured it probably would if it got hungry enough.
    She then doled out two cans to each of the others. There was some grumbling from the man when he got the peas that the dog had licked at, but it didn’t last. They were all hungry, and anyone who had survived the weeks since the Fall had learned to eat what they found. She ended up eating a can of kidney beans and a can of mixed fruit. The fruit was sweet and syrupy, normally a thing she would have turned her nose up at, but she knew she needed the calories and she pushed it all down her throat.
    Stopping for lunch seemed to be the cue for the man to try and get her talking again. It seemed talking was an obsession for him.
    “So, where to?”
    She simply pointed in the direction they had been walking.
    He sighed. “I know we’re headed that way, but what’s the long-term goal? What’s the plan?”
    She didn’t feel like sharing her vague theories though, so she simply said.
    “Like she told the Mule, earlier. There is no plan and you will both likely die.”
    That shut him up for a few moments, at least. She enjoyed finishing off her last can in silence.
    Finished eating, she stood, shouldered her pack, and started off again. As before, they all followed. She still wasn’t sure why.
     
    ---
     
    As evening fell, they were still walking on the same highway. It had been a peaceful, uneventful afternoon. It was probably the first uneventful afternoon she had experienced since the Fall, and it was making her jumpy. Perhaps this thought was why she decided to seek shelter for the night a little earlier than usual. That, and the coincidence that as soon as she decided to look for shelter the perfect location came into view around a bend in the road.
    On the left side of the road, amongst the endless array of farm fields they had been passing, was a gravel drive that led past two greenhouses and a large, red barn. It then continued perhaps another hundred yards to a farmhouse. The farmhouse was unremarkable, like many others they had passed during the day. But it was the barn that peaked her interest. It was a barn out of a storybook: big, red, solidly built, and with a large set of double doors at the front big enough to drive a tractor through. It had no windows or other doors that she could see on the sides, and only one shuttered window over the large doors at the front. She presumed that led to a loft. With only the one set of doors at the front, and perhaps