There hadn’t been any sight or sound of people or animals since she’d encountered that man the night before, but she hurried away from the stream, grateful for the thicker cover of the woods on this side.
Red did not want to camp so close to the water. She continued on for another half hour or so, keeping a close eye on the shadows around her and listening for the sound of anybody else hiding in the trees.
Then it just appeared before her, almost like a hallucination summoned by her exhausted brain. A cabin. A cabin all by its lonesome, in a clearing in the woods.
For one brief moment she thought she’d somehow gotten to her grandmother’s house already, that she’d walked farther than she realized in the night. Then she shook her head and recognized that this building was about a quarter of the size of her grandmother’s—Grandma had a two-story with four rooms on the ground floor and a loft bedroom above, built with love and care by Red’s grandfather, who always went by Papa.
This was more like a hunting shack, a one-room affair with rough-hewn logs and a small metal chimney. There were beige-colored curtains over the one window she could see, but there didn’t appear to be any signs of life.
That doesn’t mean anything. Someone could be asleep inside, someone with a shotgun next to his bed who’ll blow your stupid head off if you knock on the door. And anyway in the movies people always get stuck in some cabin in the middle of nowhere and it seems like there’s nobody around but actually there is a serial killer lurking nearby who can just fade into the trees and wait for someone to walk into his trap.
(Red, don’t go thinking stupid thoughts. If there was ever a serial killer here he’s probably dead from the Cough just like everyone else.)
That last bit sounded like her mama’s voice, her very practical mama.
But there might be someone in there, there really might.
She found her feet moving toward the cabin anyway, even though her brain was saying, No no no too risky. Her legs had mutinied, taken the rest of her hostage, because her heart had seen that little cabin—rough and no doubt filthy it would be—and longed for it. She longed to sleep somewhere inside, under a roof instead of the open air or the thin nylon of her tiny tent.
She longed for the security of a boundary on all sides, of feeling tucked in and cozy and knowing that nobody could sneak up on her if the door was shut and locked. That was something she’d taken for granted before, before Everything Happened—the feeling of being indoors, of being safe.
Red couldn’t let go of her caution, though—couldn’t just walk right up to the door and act like she belonged there (because there might be a guy there with a shotgun, there really might, or a killer with a machete). She crept toward the one window as quietly as she could, which was not very quietly because there were dry dead leaves all around the clearing that seemed as loud as firecrackers in the still air.
She peered into the interior through the little crack in the curtains but couldn’t see anything except the handle of an old-fashioned metal percolator sitting on a table under the window. The rest of the cabin was too dark. So she looked closer at that percolator handle, because it was the only clue she had.
The dust was thick on the top curve of the handle, too thick to have been used by anyone recently. Which meant there probably wasn’t anyone inside. Probably.
She walked all around the cabin, looking for footprints
(like you’re some kind of tracker, ha, what do you even think you’re looking for?)
because even if she wasn’t some kind of tracker she could recognize a fresh print in the dirt if she saw one and she didn’t see any around the cabin or by the door.
Having done the only safety check she could do, Red approached the front door and tried the handle.