them.
Lack of sleep, coupled with the amount of exertion needed to keep full attention at night while wearing improperly balanced packs, had left them both sore and depleted. Matt only left the steaming tent now because he had to relieve the pressure building within his bladder. He pulled his pants up as he stepped out, leaving them unbuckled. He yawned mightily, trying to stretch the kinks away and the tightness out of his muscles by arching his back as far as it would go.
When Matt straightened back up, he was slightly light-headed, and whirring spots swooped by his vision. He turned his head left, where the sounds of a slow-moving, narrow river could be heard. His movement startled a groundhog into inaction, and he stared dumbly at it, not quite sure about what to do next. The groundhog stared right back, not more than fifteen feet away.
Matt pulled a small black case from his right cargo pocket that held a collapsed sling-shot inside. He unfolded it and, after fishing around in the little case for one of the steel ball bearings that he had taken from a motor pool bench, loaded the pocket and pulled tension into the elastic material. Accomplishing all of this without breaking his stare down with the quadruped, he loosed the projectile true; he knew to not move his forehand, as this was the key to accuracy.
The ball bearing thumped dully off the top of the groundhog’s head, and it started to writhe around, mewing loudly. Matt ducked back into the tent, startling Terry with his intensity. He had to flip his rolled pack a couple of times to gain access to the hatchet that finally fell out. Matt rushed across the distance with the animal, which was drunkenly trying to get away, its body curled into a ‘C’ and not responding correctly. He brained the animal with the hammer side of the hatchet, killing it with one blow; the next few hits were just a precaution.
He knew to let the body sit for a while, giving any fleas or other parasites a chance to leave the cooling body. He briefly scanned the area, looking to see if anyone had noticed the commotion, taking the moment to pee into a small bush. Terry would not want to see the animal’s corpse, so he pinched it between two sticks and dragged it further from the camp; heading closer to the river.
Matt told Terry to get both a fire going and to start boiling water in both canteen cups, and that he would be back in a few minutes with food. Terry asked him what was happening, concern written all across her face. He just stood there grinning. Finally, after she had slapped his shoulder, he informed her, in his own crass way, that he had caught lunch.
Grabbing his knife, Matt said they would eat and then head out again to the north. They were trying to find what the truck drivers had called the “Warehouse”. Matt hoped they were close to the right spot, the hand-drawn map that they were relying on was proving to be very inadequate.
……..
Thus far, Daniel had been making good time, noting that even the few houses that he thought to be occupied were now looking abandoned. In his mind, he was again revising the plan to fortify their house as he crossed behind the Korean church. He now felt that their place would stick out like a sore thumb if it was obviously the only house on the block that still looked lived in. Even if he strung up traps and kept the doors and windows barricaded, they would still just look like a target.
It now made more sense to make the house look like just another partial burn-out; black soot going up from the windows could be easily faked. The boarded-up windows would make it look as if it had burned a decade before, when there was still people around who cared about such things. Even the cars could easily be stashed away in nearby garages, just in case.
The only problem with this plan was the Drifters. If they were new to the area, they would just see it as a place to search. The plan might solve the concern over invaders, but this was only accomplished by creating a different set of problems altogether.
Daniel crossed the intersection at the western edge of the subdivision, which was also the last exposed area before making it to the creek that would lead