And of course she mentioned the general location of the houses she pilfered as well.

  All of that was as good as anything else to talk about at the end of a long day, as they went through the day’s haul and prepared their once daily meals.

  An unintended result of all that was that Angela, never having been in a death house before, knew pretty much everything her sister had picked up from looting such places for months.

  She knew that if the cupboards were bare it wasn’t reason to get discouraged and leave.

  It merely meant the homeowners likely moved their food to secret places to keep it from being taken should they be overrun by marauders.

  And thanks to Kristy’s efforts in similar houses she knew the best places to look: often they were secreted into holes punched into the walls and then covered with posters or paintings. In mattresses. Underneath couches and other furniture. In upstairs dresser drawers.

  Angela even knew where there was a stash ready for the taking, for Kristy had told her before her last mission about the house on the corner of Tillie and Malim.

  “There’s enough for at least five more visits, if I fill my pack just halfway each time. I even saw several boxes of Jell-O. It made my mouth water,” she’d said as she giggled.

  She told Angela she’d hidden all the food she left behind inside a box spring she turned upside down in a little girl’s bedroom. Not because she wanted Angela to retrieve the food for her, but rather just in passing during one of their normal conversations.

  But the result was the same.

  Angela knew that on the corner of Tillie and Malim was a death house. And in the upstairs bedroom where a little girl once laid her head to sleep was enough food to keep them alive for several days.

  All she had to do was go get it.

  The only thing she wasn’t quite sure of: which of the four houses on that street corner held the treasure.

  But that didn’t worry her, for it would become painfully obvious once she got within smelling distance.

  It would be the one with the rotting flesh, casting a disgusting stench which was enough to repel nearly every looter who happened by.

  And attract Kristy, who by now looted exclusively death houses.

  Angela couldn’t leave while Kristy was awake, for she knew she’d be stopped dead in her tracks.

  As dire as their situation was, Kristy would not allow little sis to strike out into the cold cruel world on her own, even for a mission which should take an hour or two, tops.

  But Angela was determined to go, driven by more than just the hunger in her gut and her desire to pamper Kristy through her hour of despair.

  For one thing, Kristy seemed to be getting a bit better in recent days, but was still haunted by something only she knew; something she still refused to talk about.

  Angela knew little about depression or the turmoil which invades the human mind in stressful times. Nor did she know how to treat it.

  But she could recognize it, and knew her sister was suffering from it.

  As though that wasn’t enough reason to go on her mission, she had another reason as well.

  On the day Angela had refused to step over the rotting corpse at the 7-Eleven, and had been grabbed as a result, Kristy blamed her in part.

  “You shouldn’t be so afraid.” Kristy told her. “Dead bodies are a thing of the new world. They’re everywhere. They can’t hurt you.

  “You’ve got to toughen up. You can’t be a sissy all your life.”

  The jab hurt Angela’s feelings, and Kristy later apologized, but the damage was done.

  And ever since that day Angela had been searching for a way to prove that she wasn’t… that cowardly soul Kristy thought her to be.

  Kristy was right in one regard.

  The world, in all likelihood, wasn’t going to get gentler and kinder anytime soon.

  Angela had to toughen up for both their sakes.

  And in her mind a mission out, alone, was the perfect way to accomplish that.

  If all went well she could go out the next day too, and the day after that.

  And as long as it took, really, until Kristy was back on her game.

  Then, once she proved herself to her sister, perhaps they could start going out together.

  Teamwork in action.

  One could stand guard while the other searched for treasures.

  Angela could finally pull her share of the weight. Could at last be a contributing member of the family, instead of just the little kid who stayed behind each day so she wouldn’t get hurt. No longer the sissy little sister, but rather a full-fledged member of the dynamic duo.

  And, she could carry a second backpack. Even if they only filled it halfway they’d double their daily haul.

  That would mean they’d no longer have to go out every day. They could take a day off occasionally without losing much ground.

  It would be almost like an honest to goodness vacation.

  Or as close as anyone could get to a vacation in a world where death was lurking around every corner.

  That part made her smile.

  Chapter 36

  Despite her troubled upbringing in the most dysfunctional of homes… despite having a father serving life without parole and a mother who was a junkie and a prostitute…

  Despite all that, Kristy tried her best to live a good life.

  When she was Angela’s age she started sneaking out on Sunday and Wednesday nights and attending church services with a friend.

  That same friend gave Kristy her first Bible, and in the four years hence she’d read it from cover to cover twice.

  Kristy considered herself a good person and a Christian, though she’d never been baptized and never entered membership in any particular church.

  Now, after having killed another human being, her view of her own life and what would become of her after her death were thrown into turmoil.

  That was the source of her depression.

  She was trying to come to terms with killing a man, and how it would affect her in the long term; how it already affected her in the short term.

  In her mind it made her a murderer.

  For nothing she could recall reading in the Good Book made any allowances for the ultimate sin.

  The sixth commandment said, “Thou shalt not kill.”

  It didn’t say, “Thou shalt not kill unless the other person is bad.”

  It didn’t say, “Thou shalt not kill unless the person you kill has a knife.”

  It didn’t say, “Thou shalt not kill, but God will make an exception for Kristy because she’s young and was in fear for her life.”

  No.

  It said, simply, “Thou shalt not kill.”

  Four simple words that were easy to understand and impossible to misinterpret.

  Kristy was aware that society had long made exceptions for certain cases.

  Soldiers in wartime, for example, were allowed to kill when fighting for their country. They assumed that God was okay with that. Of course, that makes sense, since during wartime every nation on earth firmly believes that God is on “their” side.

  Society makes exceptions for the judges who sentence men found guilty of heinous crimes, in effect ordering them to be killed.

  It makes exceptions for the executioners who inject lethal drugs into the bodies of those men. Members of firing squads. The men who throw the switch in an electrocution chamber.

  The exception most applicable, Kristy figured, in her own case, was that of self-defense.

  She assumed that if she were arrested and tried for murder she’d have been acquitted, for she really did shoot the man in self-defense. It was, quite literally, a case of kill or be killed.

  Society would almost surely give her a pass.

  But it wasn’t society she was worried about.

  She was worried about how she’d be viewed in the eyes of God.

  Surely, if God was the benevolent being she believed Him to be He would give her a pass too.

  But as much as she wanted to believe that, her mind kept going back to the sixth commandment.

  “Thou shalt not kill.”

  Four little words that were tormenting her, ripping her apart.

  For there were only those four words: “Thou shalt not kill.”

  And absolutely no exceptions.

  She knew she was slacking off.

  She knew they were running out of food, and that she was leaning too heavily on poor Angela to cook the meals and boil the rainwater and provide security while she slept.

  She felt bad about that.

  But she was in the midst of a bout of deep depression, and the thing about that is… no matter how guilty she felt or how bad she felt or how much she wanted to snap out of her slump… she was simply unable to do so.

  Oh, she was slowly coming out of it.

  Each day seemed a tiny bit better than the day before.

  But the quick “snap” that was needed was elusive. She knew instinctively that wasn’t going to happen. And at the miserably slow rate she was crawling out of the darkness they’d likely be long dead of starvation before she could start contributing again.

  Unless…

  Unless Angela, who understood the situation completely and wanted to help by taking over the role of hunter-gatherer, could jump-start the process in a purely unintentional way.

  Kristy had been sleeping a lot in recent days.

  It was a trait quite common in those suffering from anxiety and depression.

  Her nights were fitful; tossing and turning and waking up at the slightest noise.

  The one thing such fitful sleep was good for was in justifying one’s napping three or four times a day for sometimes hours at a stretch.

  It was during one of these naps, in the early afternoon, that Angela left on her very first solo mission.

  She hated leaving under such secretive circumstances. But she knew darned well that Kristy would hold her back if she tried to leave at any other time.

  And they desperately needed food.

  She peeked in on her sister and made sure she was asleep before donning her backpack and putting on her holster.

  It looked so much bigger on her tiny frame than it did on Kristy’s. And it was much heavier than she’d imagined.

  She grabbed Kristy’s rifle and climbed through the back yard window where Kristy made her own exits, then stole away down the alley.

  The note she left behind was rudimentary, but did its job:

  WENT FOR FOOD.

  BE BACK SOON.

  Really, after all… what else needed to be said?

  Chapter 37

  The American black bear is often viewed as a rather benign creature. She spends her life ambling around, mostly casually, as she scrounges for berries on low-lying bushes or trout in fast-moving streams.

  For a human watching from a distance it seems she hasn’t a care in the world; nowhere in particular she needs to be and a lot of time to get there.

  But watch that bear long enough and she’ll show her true nature.

  She’s anything but docile and slow.

  She’s actually a killing machine, primed and ready to charge at less than a moment’s notice.

  The first hint is when the wind shifts and carries a vague scent to her sensitive nostrils.

  Her keen sense of smell, a far better tool than her just-average eyesight, tells her there’s a human nearby.

  Her hackles go up as the hair immediately rises on the back of her neck. It’s something she has in common with humans and many other mammals.

  It’s a sign of danger and fear.

  As fearsome as she is, as ferocious as she can be, she actually fears humans as much or more than they fear her.

  It’s not that men carry weapons capable of killing her from half a mile away, before she has a chance to defend herself, though that’s certainly the case.

  That’s not why she fears them, for she doesn’t know about the guns.

  Believe it or not, bears don’t watch hunters from a distance and wonder about what Native Americans used to call a “fire stick,” a long thing which makes a thunderous roar and spews fire from itself.

  No, a bear in the wild doesn’t fear a gun itself, for it likely doesn’t know what it is.

  A typical black bear which is prey rather than hunter encounters a gun just once in its life, and then typically from far away.

  Moreso, only a tiny portion of that gun is likely to make contact with the bear during that one single encounter: the bullet which leaves the gun at a rate of speed far faster than the creature can run from it.

  The bullet which tears through its heart and takes its life.

  No, the American black bear doesn’t fear the gun because it doesn’t know what it is or what it’s capable of.

  Rather, she fears man because she smells his stench in the oddest of places.

  She smells his scent on the remains of another of her kind, deep in the woods where he has no real right to be. At least from a bear’s point of view.

  When a hunter field dresses a trophy bear, or any other animal for that matter, he typically takes it (or most of it) with him.

  He packs out the fur to hang on the wall in his den, or to cover the floor before his fireplace.

  Depending on the laws of the state where he takes his trophy he may be required to pack out the meat. Not a fun task if the animal he killed weighs over a hundred pounds and he’s miles away from the nearest road or river.

  Other states allow the hunter to leave the entrails behind; he can field dress the animal and take only what he wants to take, leaving some or all of the meat behind for the scavengers.

  One thing the hunter always leaves behind is his scent, which can linger at the kill site for days or until the first heavy rain.

  Any bear or other animal which happens along picks up the scent and soon learns to associate man with violent death.

  Man is also associated with campsites. Campsites with the cold remnants of campfires. Bears understand fires and are terrified of them. They know fires also bring death. They know man brings fire. Another reason to fear and dislike him.

  So, that female bear ambling through the meadow, which seemingly doesn’t have a care in the world… when she senses man is nearby she changes in less than a heartbeat.

  Her instincts tell her to run; to get the hell away from there. Typically that’s what she’ll do.

  But if she senses that man is close by she’ll stand her ground. She’ll go into killing mode. She’ll try to kill the man before he kills her.

  And if this bear is a mother and happens to have cubs nearby?

  Her ferocity level is multiplied many times over.

  Now then, this American black bear, which may or may not have young ones close by, has many things in common with a typical American woman.

  A typical American woman is well aware of what man is capable of, both good and bad.

  A man is supposed to love, honor and protect the fair species, whether they’re attached in a one-on-one relationship or total strangers treated so by societal norms.

  Most men do.

  Behave responsibly and respect and protect women, that is.

  But every woman is aware that some men just can’t abide by societal norms or the rules decent people live by.

  Many men commit horrific crimes and can be downright dangerous.

  Women therefore, like their counterparts the bears and pretty much every other mammal, view the male of their species warily. Perhaps, until she gets to know him, with a certain level of distrust.

  They’re taught to do so from a young age. That’s what the whole “stranger danger” thing is all about.

  Women who are mothers are most protective of all, for their “cubs” are to be protected at all costs.

  It’s why mothers learn to be on constant alert. It’s why they have hair triggers and are ready to jump into action every bit as quickly as an angry and charging bear.

  Don’t believe it? Go to Any Playground, U.S.A.

  Watch how closely every mother watches her young as they play with other kids.

  And watch how quickly they spring into action when a strange man walks toward their children.

  Kristy had never been a mother.

  But she was a sister, and that was close.

  As a sister charged with the safety and protection of a younger sibling, she was always ready to spring into action to protect her.

  Kristy was groggy when she awoke from her nap.

  Furthermore, she was still entrapped in a deep dark depression. The last thing she wanted to do was leave the house on a rescue mission.

  Then she read Angela’s note.

  And everything changed.

  She was suddenly wide awake, completely alert and out the door for the first time in many days.

  Mama Bear, or in this case Sister Bear, was on her way to save her cub.

  Chapter 38

  It’s almost never calm in San Antonio, Texas. It’s not necessarily windy, except for the spring storm season.

  But there’s almost always a gentle breeze blowing.

  In the summer it combines with the sweat on one’s brow to create a cooling as well as calming effect.

  In the dead of winter it sometimes causes one to turn up the collar on his coat or to drop his head a bit.

  This was a crisp fall day, as little Angela walked up Tillie Drive toward Malim.

  On this particular day the breeze brought neither chills nor refreshing coolness.

  On this particular day it brought something much less pleasant. On this day it brought the stench of death.

  It had been awhile since Angela encountered the horrific smell, but her mind went instantly back to the doorway of that 7-Eleven and the poor soul who laid there, his head exploded by a gunshot.

  For the first time her resolve was tested.

  She slowed her walk. Thought about turning around. Or perhaps skipping the death house and trying her luck instead at one which didn’t have stinking, rotting, maggot-riddled corpses to greet her as she walked through.

  It was at that moment her stomach growled.

 

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