Free Gray (Book 2) by Lou Cadle Page A

suggested enlarging it, but he pointed out that if they did, it wouldn’t stay as warm. What they had here, she thought, was a form of cabin fever, and she dreamed of running across a cache of paperback books and a lantern in the ruins of a house somewhere, or anything to break the tedium of hiding out in the snow cave and staring at the light at the entrance. Every day, she practiced with bow and arrows, but not for long, as the cold drove her back inside.
    The taste of their limited varieties of soup had long since grown boring. She wasn’t achingly hungry any longer, but neither of them put on much weight either.
    Coral hated herself for it, but she felt an overwhelming sense of meaninglessness. She wasn’t developing her mind. She wasn’t developing her social skills. The only thing she was getting better at was her archery skills. She wondered if prison felt like this.
    The best that could be said was that they were surviving. She wondered, and more with every passing day, if that were enough for her. When the thought passed through her mind, she knew that she wasn’t ready, not today, to wander naked into the snow and let the cold kill her, but as she imagined ten years of living right here, off the train car of soup, or even one more year, she could see that death might seem more and more attractive an option.
    And then, as she figured it must be approaching Halloween, the ennui evaporated.
    Benjamin had been out on an ice run for more than an hour, and Coral was warming her lunch when she heard a noise in the distance. For a moment, she didn’t recognize it. A buzz, growing slowly louder. Then she realized: it was the sound of an engine, a truck engine.

Chapter 4
    Her heart leapt painfully in her chest. Someone’s vehicle had survived? This changed everything. She stood and turned toward the sound like a lizard turning toward the morning sun. Part of her wanted to go running toward it, whooping with glee.
    But the part of her that had learned cruel lessons since The Event kept her still. She turned her head this way and that, trying to figure out from the sound how far it was away and which way it was heading.
    The noise grew louder. And it came from the southwest of here, so maybe it was following the train tracks. Or it could be cutting cross country, maybe following a compass heading east.
    Her mind spun for a second, then locked onto a thought. I should get ready to haul ass out of here if need be . So first, load the supplies back onto the sled and— No. Damn. Benjamin has the sled.
    At least if this were danger headed her way, he was well away from it. As for her? Defense first.
    She kicked snow over her fire, killing the small wisp of smoke rising from it. She gathered up the soup cans, barely warm to the touch, and carried them into the snow cave. Coming back out, she looked around, trying to see the camp with new eyes. A well-worn path went from snow cave to latrine. She kicked more snow around that. For several minutes, she pushed snow into the latrine, and then she went back to the fire and did the same, until the dark circle of the cooking pit was light gray again with fluffy, ash-colored snow. In the garage she retrieved her bow and arrows, and she scraped snow around the entrance, trying her best to disguise the line of the entrance tunnel, leaving an opening no wider than her hips.
    When she was done, she turned toward the snow cave, stopping at the last second to look back at the garage. It was still a suspicious hump, but it could be something natural. From a distance, someone might think nothing of it.
    Had it snowed since the last time they did a food run? She thought it had. She hoped so. Otherwise, a careful tracker could follow their circuitous trail back here from the train tracks.
    After the camp was taken care of, she had to decide what to do next. She could run, follow Benjamin’s trail up to the water, and hide out with him. It’s what he might want.
    But no. The most useful thing