Lynn felt like limping too. Even with her hardened feet and well-trained leg muscles, she was trembling with exhaustion. She wasn’t used to walking from sunup to sundown with only a few minutes of rest for some food. The straps of her backpack dug into her shoulders, and her own wolf-induced injuries were throbbing. She hoisted her arm up against her chest again in an effort to alleviate the pain and licked her dry lips. Her water had run out long ago. “Just a little farther, Skeeve.”
She followed the sign that read 95 to New Haven. Once she smelled water, she dared a quick trip to the edge of the deck and stared down into a broad, rushing river. She groaned. It was going to take to sundown at least to get down to ground level and then backtrack under the mass of overhead roads. There was no other choice, though. She couldn’t live without water.
It took her even longer than she’d expected. By the time she’d drunk her fill and topped off her bottles, darkness already encroached. And this was a bad place to be stuck at during the night; the many underpasses offered plenty of shadows for animals and humans to make their homes in. She hurried back up the slope, but her calves strained against every step and her already-tight lower back seized up entirely by the time she made it back onto to the right road.
Skeever whined as he caught up, stopped, then caught up again.
“Almost,” she assured him. “Almost.”
Once she was certain she’d left the spiderweb behind and was now securely on the road Dani was on, she broke into a big building, which had been painted blue at some point. It could have been a school; the walls inside still held many of their bright colors, and the tables and chairs she found inside the large rooms were tiny.
Lynn shied away from these spaces; they all had windows to the outside, and she didn’t want to be seen. She examined every room, walked every hallway, to see if the building was as empty as it had appeared. Once she was satisfied it was, she returned to a small office at the heart of the building and barricaded herself and Skeever in by upturning the desk.
As soon as she unrolled her bedding, Skeever sank down on it and went to sleep.
Lynn tried to feed him an apple.
He didn’t even look at it.
She ate it herself while she took off her boots, then lay down. A moan escaped her when every single muscle in her body seemed to relax at the same time. Walking sunup to sundown wasn’t good for the body.
Skeever sighed and tilted his head up to connect with her arm.
“Sleep well, Skeever. Up early tomorrow. I’m hoping your nose will help me find Dani.”
He licked his lips and exhaled in a huff.
Lynn remembered to get her knife, groped for it blindly, and pressed it against her torso. That’ll have to do for tonight. She was too exhausted for more. Within minutes, she sank into a deep, exhausted sleep that not even her survival instincts woke her from.
So hungry! Lynn groaned and blinked her eyes open. Her limbs felt leaden, but above all, her stomach gnarled hungrily, and her head pounded. She knew that feeling, and it frightened her. After the headache would come the dizziness and then the general weakness. She had to eat.
Lynn messily gathered her things and forced herself to slow down as she made her way out. Anything could have wandered in last night.
Skeever didn’t seem worried. He sniffed the hallways with his natural optimism and hurried outside once Lynn held the door open for him.
She cast a look at the outside world. It was later than she’d thought. The sun was already visible on the horizon. She should have gotten up earlier or made up for lost time by leaving now, but her stomach growled for attention.
Tiny chairs provided wood for a small fire, where she cooked oatmeal with apple, two flatbreads, and beef jerky and carrot soup.
Skeever caught a blackbird and ate it noisily.
She scooped every bit of oatmeal out of the tin, ate half the soup, and left one of the flatbreads. She could have eaten the rest as well—easily so—but decided to leave it as a snack for the road. At least her headache was going down now that her stomach was full. Lynn ran her hands through her hair.
The memory of her naked body in the mirror haunted her. Bone and muscle, that’s all you are. She needed more food, more rest, and a life where she wasn’t a forced march and a missed meal away from death. Without the supplies Dani had offered her, she would be forced to hunt or take Skeever’s bird from him in order to get some energy back.
She swallowed. Yeah. She needed to get to Dani, and she needed to convince her to stay.
Yesterday’s cloud coverage hadn’t gotten any lighter. Lynn couldn’t tell accurately how gray the sky would remain because the sun wasn’t yet up high enough, but she was worried. Even the hint she got of how the sky would light up later promised her one thing: rain. Lots and lots of rain.
Lynn bit into her flatbread and chewed slowly. If it started to rain, she would have to find shelter or risk getting sick in soaked clothes.
Thinking about that possibility wouldn’t do any good. She had to make more progress than Dani today or she could never hope to overtake her. Lynn packed and got up. Her legs protested with sharp stabs. “Come on, boy. Dani’s out there. Gotta find her.” She patted her thigh.
He got up with great reluctance and trotted over.
She stroked his head and pulled some downy feathers from under his lip and from between his teeth. “Time to go.”
Skeever seemed to grasp that there was no escaping the inevitable and took up his usual spot ahead of her, sniffing the ground. She helped him onto the 95 by hoisting him over a divider and turned north.
Judging by the angle of the slowly rising sun—as best as she could guess its location in the sky through the dense clouds—she hadn’t made it to the road she’d come down on yet. She was still traveling east. The vegetation around the road decreased in density. The bombings must have been less intense here, a fact reinforced by the buildings lining the road. All were overgrown with ivy and other creepers; all were in dangerous stages of neglect, but time and nature’s reclaiming touch were the primary causes, not complete destruction. The roads and walkways had survived the war and had stunted the growth of trees.
Bushes, grass, and weeds still grew abundant, but the claustrophobia that Lynn had felt while encased in forest was gone. She was no longer on a raised track either; as soon as she’d left the massive conglomeration of roads, the 95 had become a regular street that ran straight down an urban area.
Lynn’s guard was up. It was good to have sky overhead again, but every hedgerow, house entrance, fence, or corner promised dangers that were invisible—until it was too late. Whenever they approached a danger point, she slowed and held her tomahawk ready to strike.
A pack of at least fifteen dogs crossed an intersection maybe two hundred feet from her, and Lynn hurried to muzzle Skeever before he could bark. She pulled him into an alley after casting a quick glance down its length to see if it was occupied, and waited. A pack of dogs usually didn’t attack on sight, but risking it would be foolish.
Skeever growled low in his throat.
Lynn tapped him on the nose to shush him. She counted seconds, up to a hundred. Then she peered around the corner.
The pack was gone.
She waited until Skeever’s fur had settled, then let go of his muzzle.
He didn’t bark, nor did he pull against the hold she still had on his collar.
As soon as she let him go, he shook himself out and then looked up with big, brown, trusting eyes.