She smiled at him and stroked his head. “Good boy.”
Once they crossed the intersection, the dogs were nowhere in sight.
By noon, Lynn was getting very tired of playing hide-and-seek with deadly critters. It slowed her down when she could least afford it. She chewed on a pear she’d pulled from a tree in one of the yards as she tried to strategize.
If Dani had even made it this far, she might have left the 95. So no matter how long and fast Lynn walked, they would miss each other in this crumbling maze. Dani could be on a parallel road right now, and Lynn would never know it. The car dealership was a good back-up plan, but Lynn was pretty hell-bent on meeting up far earlier—preferably before the rain came.
As the sun had climbed the sky, light patches had started to form cracks in the gray blanketing the sky, but rain was definitely on the horizon. Based on the increasing strength of the wind and years of experience, Lynn estimated it would start coming down in buckets before she would usually make camp, near the end of the afternoon. Darker clouds were moving in from the northwest, and they promised not just rain but thunderstorms. She shouldn’t be surprised, given the heat of the last few days.
Skeever perked his ears and stopped dead in his tracks. His tail shuddered.
Lynn looked around but saw nothing. She was about to urge him on when her far less accurate human ears picked up on what he’d heard: geese. Her stomach rumbled at the thought of meat. She cocked her head. Their telltale gurgling squawks came from somewhere to their left. “Go.”
Skeever went off, sniffing the ground as he pulled into a light run.
She followed him cautiously, keeping her eyes peeled for geese and dangers alike. Geese were horrid creatures—vicious monsters that attacked without provocation. Their beaks came equipped with razor-sharp edges that did terrible damage to any exposed skin. They also tasted delicious, and they were slow enough for a dog or a well-thrown tomahawk to kill.
Skeever tracked their squawking to a fenced-in yard. It was so overgrown that even climbing the chain-link fence wouldn’t give Lynn a vantage point, so she circled it, and the house, for a way in.
The calls of the birds seemed to egg Skeever on. He rushed ahead of her. Then he disappeared.
Before Lynn could fully grasp that he’d found an opening in the fence large enough to squeeze through, chaos ensued in the yard. Lynn didn’t have to see what was happening to place the noises. That was the sound of a startled gaggle of geese fleeing for their lives now that an excited dog had gotten into their sanctuary. Most of the settlements Lynn had lived in as a child had a hen house. One night, a fox had snuck into one of them, and Lynn had been awoken by the hens’ frantic flapping and clucking. This sounded almost exactly the same, the only difference being that the geese fought back and hissed angrily. The garden wasn’t big enough for the geese to spread their wings and take off, so they were going on the offensive.
Lynn hurried to find the opening but didn’t dare crawl through when she found it. She’d meet frantic geese who’d chew her face off. So she lifted her tomahawk instead and waited for any escaping geese to come her way.
The panicked flapping sounds decreased, and the hisses grew louder and more frequent.
Skeever yelped.
The bushes rustled.
Lynn steadied her tomahawk and braced to swing.
What emerged was definitely a goose, but its neck was lodged firmly between Skeever’s jaws.
Skeever wiggled his way through the narrow opening with the dead bird forming a stumbling block between his front legs. He didn’t let it hinder him too much, though: as soon as he was out, he ran.
Lynn didn’t hesitate to bolt after him, because the remaining geese were hot on his tail.
The gaggle pursued them much longer than Lynn had expected them to, but eventually they raised themselves up as tall as they could, flapped their wings, and hissed as they held their ground.
Lynn laughed, checked behind her, and slowed. “Skeever! Skeeve! Stop!” She was slightly out of breath, but her blood was pumping. Her mind felt light and unencumbered. Lynn hadn’t felt this alive in a long time. She checked her surroundings quickly, then looked back at the geese.
They still stood at attention, but the sting had gone out of their warning.
Skeever trotted back. When she reached out, he released the goose with only the slightest of possessive growls.
She stroked his head, then checked his back and flanks for injuries. He had a few tufts of hair missing, but her fingers came away with only a few specks of blood. The geese had taken a nip out of his left ear, but nothing too serious. She made a mental note to keep an eye on the little injury. “Silly dog.” She smiled and hugged him. “Good job.”
He trembled against her slightly but let himself be hugged.
“Good boy.” She looked up again to find the geese retreating. Good riddance!
They’d ended up somewhere farther along the 95, just past a tunnel. Stone walls rose up on either side. “Come on, let’s get a better view and then gut this thing.” Lynn took the goose by the snapped neck and walked up the slope on legs that protested every step after her sprint.
Once she’d gotten a bit of an overview again—or at least wasn’t in a hole anymore—she made quick work of the goose. She plucked the majority of its feathers from its belly and neck, then cut it open from the neck to the poop hole. The guts came out easily, and she tossed them to Skeever as his reward—all but the intestines to spare him a mouthful of feces. Then she cut its esophagus and gently extracted the crop and gizzard. She carefully cut out the little sack that held the goose’s stomach juice and tossed the remainder to Skeever, who hurried to snatch up his treat.
Grass was never hard to find, and she stuffed the carcass with it to the point of bursting. Then she wrapped it up with ivy vine to keep it closed. It was a rush job, and she still had a lot of plucking to do before she would be able to cook it, but for now, this would do. She wiped her hands on her pants and tied the goose to her backpack by its neck so it could air and keep until dinner.
Skeever had long finished his share of the kill, but he didn’t show any interest in the rest of the goose. He sniffed around the area and whimpered softly.
Lynn looked up from the knot she’d been tying. “Everything okay?” She reached for the tomahawk by her knee and stood. Nothing jumped out at her, but that didn’t mean anything. She reached down blindly and hoisted her backpack onto her shoulders.
Skeever trotted forward, then waited for her to catch up.
As soon as he did, he hurried on. He kept his head low to the ground and sniffed.
A sliver of hope began to glow in Lynn’s chest, and she picked up the pace. Did he smell Dani? Was she close?
The deck climbed again, with the overhead signs still announcing she was on the 95 to New Haven. It curved north and went down again to meet another road, the part of the 95 Lynn had traveled down on. And there, in the distance, was a little, person-shaped figure.
Lynn’s breath hitched. I did it!
Skeever hurried down the ramp.
Lynn waved frantically. “Dani!”
CHAPTER 10
THE FIGURE RAISED A HAND above their eyes and looked back at her.
Lynn rushed forward. She’d done it! She’d somehow managed to do the impossible: find a single woman in the Wilds!
The figure still didn’t move.
Surely, she can figure out who it is? Relief turned acidic in her gut. Why isn’t she moving? She gripped the shaft of her tomahawk to assure herself that she’d be ready to fight, just in case she’d been wrong about the identity of the figure.