Free When Gods Fail by Nelson Lowhim Page A

you? You think the next men that find you will to be nice
to you?" I drew in some air. "We are the only people around, so we
need to stick together." I looked for her hands. "I know the land
looks daunting, but there's hope. We have a chance to make
something here. Sooner or later we'll find people and we can build
something together. Do you understand?"
    She didn't reply.
    The next day, using the hills as cover, I
took her to Bill and Paul's container. The walk took a few hours. I
went inside first, searched everything. They had dug out several
different chambers for themselves. I grabbed as much ammunition as
I could, gave a load to Jenny and headed back. It took a few days
going back and forth to clear their place out of everything useful.
Their food doubled our rations. They had kerosene lanterns,
batteries, radios, grenades, a machine gun with several belts,
tripwires, oil, generators, filters, knives, acetylene torch, steel
beams, other survival items, and books; books on survival, on
growing, on surviving a nuclear holocaust. I wondered if this
literature was based on actual knowledge.
    When we transferred everything, I made
another decision to move to the cave. The shack was too small.
Jenny seemed all right with the move, if a little recalcitrant.
Every time I said something, she would listen, do a task but stayed
away from looking at me or speaking a word.
    I let her be. She needed to mourn her
family. And now, more than ever, I felt a strong connection to her,
as if we were finally a couple.
    *
    "I'm going to burn down their place
tomorrow. We got everything we wanted from it," I said.
    We were sleeping together in the cave. I'd
managed to cover the entrance so that it was hidden. I'd glued
rocks on a metal sheet for a door. Someone might have found it if
they looked closely, but for the most part the concealment was
perfect. The cave was now home. And I hoped that being away from
the shack would help her forget her family quicker. I threw the
blanket away as well. Better to eliminate the evidence of that
night.
    "Why?" she asked.
    Her words startled me. Spoken softly, they
broke her silent cocoon like a sledgehammer. I could smell her
clothes, her sex. I wanted her, but I didn't want her to contradict
me, or ask too many questions. "What do you mean?"
    "I mean didn't you say you wanted to build
something in the world? How can you do that if you're burning
things down?" she said.
    "Yes, we'll build things soon, but that
place could become a hiding place for our enemies," I said. Her
glare made me feel like an insect.
    "How do you know there's anyone around?"
    "I don't." Her questions were angering me.
"Besides maybe the fire could attract people as a signal," I said
as the thought came to me.
    "But you just said they could be our
enemies," she said, feigning patience.
    I fought the urge to shake
or slap her. I was not a monster. "Okay we won't burn it."
    "You can do what you want. I was only
asking." She turned away from me.
    I spent the rest of my night staring at her
back and the black emptiness that was our cave. It felt so cozy.
That feeling turned into a sense of injustice at the cards that I
had been dealt. I hadn't asked to be attacked. Self-defense had
been my only choice. I couldn't explain that to her anymore. If she
ever found out that she was with the man who killed her family, she
would certainly end me then and there.
     
    Jenny agreed to come with me. She scared me
when she pulled out a rifle and filled it with ammunition with a
learned smoothness. She was better with guns than I was. The
thought frightened me—she could kill me any time she chose, as my
guard was always down around her—and also filled me with hope—she
hadn't tried to kill me yet. Why? With another handgun tucked under
her dress, she came along with me. The hills were rocky, a tortuous
up and down.
    "We'll sleep here," I said and pointed to
some rocks. We'd been walking for almost an entire day. Jenny had
once again reverted to