Free Gray (Book 1) by Lou Cadle Page B

and slept fitfully.
    * * *
    Within an hour of setting out the next morning, Coral arrived in the downtown of Mill Creek. The highway widened to accommodate angled parking on both sides. The fire had hit here, too, but had done a less thorough job of destruction than it had in the outskirts of town. Shells of brick buildings stood, missing roofs. Wind had stirred the fallen ash, which now lay like dunes, drifting many inches high against remaining brick and stone walls and blown away altogether in the center of the street.
    The tallest building in downtown looked to be only two stories high. Too little remained for Coral to identify all the buildings’ functions. Buildings with empty square holes where display glass had been, surely. Clothing stores? Something else? If she couldn’t find a person, she’d scavenge all these buildings, hoping for more food, or a fresh change of clothes, or any remaining supplies that could help her survive another day.
    In an small open square, a bronze statue stood, showing a man with a pick over his shoulder, leading a horse. She made her way over to it, climbed up the base, and looked around. This must have been a happy little community at one time, a mining community in the past, if the statue was to be believed. Now, it was empty of life. She wondered if someone could have survived in a mine, as she had in the cave. She’d go hunt in mines, if she had any idea where they might be.
    The disappointment of finding no one here at the town’s center felt like a cold stake in her heart. She had so hoped for an intact community, a few of the refinements of civilization. But she had found only a ghost town.
    Taking off her pack, she sunk down and sat next to the statue. What now? For a few moments, she couldn’t think straight, couldn’t work past her broken illusion that this town might be the end of her journey.
    She braced herself and forced her mind to get back on track. She’d have to have water, so for now, she’d stick to the water source, the river. After that, she’d want to make her way to a bigger city. Pocatello was closest, she thought, north or northwest of here. She wished she had a paper map and a compass.
    And if there was no one there, she’d go west along the interstate highway, I-80-something, as she recalled. By Boise, she’d surely be out of the destruction. Long before Boise, she’d surely find other survivors who had banded together. If she had to go as far as Boise, at the rate she was hiking, it would take her months to get there.
    But what other choice had she? None. She had to aim for bigger cities. Pocatello would be first, if she could find it.
    Today, there was nothing else to do but hunt for food and supplies in the ruins of this town. Maybe something had survived. Coral began to quarter the town’s central streets, taking the main crossroad down to the stream—more of a river now, where a two-lane concrete and steel bridge spanned the waterway. She turned back toward town, zigzagging to a new street, making her way back to the main drag as she tried to identify what the stores had been. Residential streets without sidewalks near the river gave way to streets with sidewalks. A couple blocks of businesses stretched beyond the main street. Even some of the brick houses might be worth searching. Canned food might have survived the fire and days of heat.
    At the fourth street she tried, a block away from the main street, a half wall remained on one corner, built right next to the sidewalk. Maybe a little grocery store, maybe a Laundromat. Hoping for a grocery store and some intact cans, she leaned over the remaining wall, looking inside at the debris. All she could see was ash lying in drifts, hiding indistinct shapes.
    She was about to step over the wall to hunt through the ash when she was yanked backward by her hair.

Chapter 7
    She tried to pull her head away but it was held fast. “Hey!” she yelled.
    Something punched into the back of her right