Free Pack by Lilith Saintcrow Page B

he’d gotten through the winter.
    The kid made a gurgling sound deep in his throat. I nodded as if he’d greeted me. Oscar wiggled a little, and the kid shot him a terrified look. The whites showed as his eyes rolled like a startled horse’s.
    â€œThat’s Oscar. He doesn’t bite.” Do you understand English, kid? I checked the sky again. I should look for supplies and get the hell out of here, hole up in camp safely for the night. After a couple days of work, it would be time to move on with whatever I could cache safely buried and whatever I could carry in the trailer weighing me down so I didn’t fly away. The kid didn’t appear much of a threat. “Neither do I. We’ll just look around and be on our way.”
    Did he understand me? When I slowly levered myself up, he went quivering-still. Oscar got up, shook himself, and ambled between us. He circled the boy, watching him sidelong, and I could swear he was saying something. He didn’t have a tail, like most Aussies, but if he had one it probably would have been straight up, a take-no-shit posture.
    I left them to it and walked away. The all-and-sundries store was locked, but a few minutes fixed that. I don’t break windows unless I’m forced to, but I’ve gotten pretty good at locks.
    Inside, the reek of spoiled and rotten food wasn’t too bad. Last winter and rats had probably taken care of that. I avoided the dairy and the sandwich section, looked longingly at a display of Twinkies—they stopped making those before the Event, and I couldn’t afford the tooth rot now—and got down to business. Canned goods, multivitamin packets, bottled water—now that was a good find, and I’d bet the gas station had even more. I wondered if the toilet worked, and glory hallelujah it did. It even filled up again, and that was a wonder and a half.
    It was enough to make a body think about staying in one place for a little while.
    Except that was a sure way to bring Others.
    So a couple hours later I eyeballed the sky, took stock of the wind, and whistled for Oscar.
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    When he came lolloping along, the boy came with him, half naked and slinking. I stood there as Oscar performed his usual I haven’t seen you in five minutes, thought you were gone forever, can I crawl under your skin? dance, ending with his rubbing up against me while I scratched behind his ears and told him he was a good boy. I took my time with it, and he was in ecstasy while I sized up the boy. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what the kid wanted.
    He was dirty, but he didn’t smell. He rubbed at his belly, rubbed and rubbed it, and I was having those thoughts of appendicitis until he looked up at me, dark eyes wide and guileless, and pointed to his mouth, making a piping little sound.
    I thought about it while he stood there, just outside my reach. I knew that sort of posture—he didn’t trust me, which was mutual, and also smart. Most people, when the apocalypse went down, tried to help others. The ones who didn’t were in the minority—a ruthless and usually well-armed one. It ended the way those things always end: with the helpful and kind getting gunned down.
    If you did travel temporarily with someone, there were the stories. Even accounting for hyperbole and the end of fucking civilization, those stories were…well.
    The things at night, the lights in the sky. Creatures in the rivers, and in whatever forests had survived mankind. The things striking at campsites, leaving only scattered bones and blood among the trample marks of feet neither human nor animal. The marks on bodies when the…feedings…were interrupted.
    There were also whispers of towns and cities being put back together, usually in some faraway corner it would take months to get to. Other, darker whispers.
    Like crying sounds in the night, and people riding to the rescue, missing until sunrise revealed their entrails